Everyone knocks List SZN, but I honestly love it: every new list acts as a barometer for where fans' heads are really at right now.
It's easy to be excited about next season in the middle of the offseason; everyone's a Championship Weekend contender right after they make a first-round pick. Now, with nothing but two weeks of lists standing between us and actual football, reality's starting to settle in. The tone of the year is set in these two weeks, whether we like it or not.
So maybe it's a good thing that, with Bears' training camp so close, people are starting to doubt Ben Johnson. It's going to make all those silly training camp narratives way more believable, at least. The latest evidence? A CBS Sports poll that took every NFL coach and, if you can believe it, ranked them! You don't have to scroll far to find Johnson, though, which is kind of a bummer.
CBS Sports ranks Ben Johnson 24th best head coach heading into first Bears season
"After years as the NFL's hottest coaching candidate, lending all kinds of aggressive play-calling to the rival Lions' turnaround, Johnson has the pieces to do something meaningful in Chi-Town. The key will be tapping into Caleb Williams' gifts while also keeping the gunslinger in check, which is a balance previous regimes couldn't manage with their quarterback projects."
If you think this is bleak for the Bears, consider the Titans and Cardinals: they know their coaches are bad, at least Bears fans aren't sure yet. If nothing else, this list is a good lesson for everyone that it can, in fact, always get worse; you could be emotionally invested in the Arizona Cardinals.
Read more: Bears must get all-important breakout 2025 performance from second-year player
All in all, a first-year coach who's never had any head coaching experience starting the season ranked in the mid-20s is fine. There are so many other Bears-adjacent lists out on the web worth getting angrier about. And now we can all pull receipts next summer and be super insufferable about it, so CBS Sports is doing us a solid.